THE N W YORKER Inter- t'\.merican Affairs, and films about life in a small American town for the State Department. The small-town films were desIgned to show foreign audiences how people lived in the United States, and thus were never re- leased here. In the early nineteen-fif- ties, I left] ulien to set up my own com- " pan y . On his own, Mr. Thompson then made seven documentary films, includ- ing "Fears of Children," a movie deal- ing with the problems of mentally dis- turbed children; "N.Y., N.Y.;" and a film on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which had been commissioned by the Atomic Energy Commission and was the first film in which Mr. rrhompson used a triple-screen process. "I must point out that I wasn't the first one ever to make a m ultiple- o " h O d " I f screen mOVIe, e sal. n act, a film projected on ten screens was shown in Paris as early as 1896, and a full-length feature-a life of Napole- on-was done on three screens in France in 1927. The advantage of three or more screens, naturally, is that the film-maker can show several things going on at once, and thus create an extremely immediate montage effect. In 'To Be Alive!,' for instance, we have a sequence that was shot at an outdoor Italian wedding in Assisi. First, spanning al] three screens-each of which at the Fair is eighteen feet wide, with a foot or so of space be- tween them-we show a panoramic view of Assisi. Then we cut to the wedding, showing the bride in a medium closeup on the center screen, while at the same tIme showing a long shot of the entire wedding scene on the left screen and a tight closeup of the wedding cake, wine bottles, and so forth on the right screen. Hopefully, this gives the viewer a montage im- pression of the entire event, making him feel almost as though he were per- sonally attending the wedding. Audi- ences, by the way, have no trouble following action on three screens at once; most film-makers terrifically un- derestimate what the human eye and the human intelligence can take in. As a matter of fact, I have plans right now for making a nine-screen film, and I expect to see the day when audiences will be surrounded by screens on all sides and above and below. I'm con- vinced that there will soon be a major revolution in movie-making, and that almost all movies will ultimately be filmed in one or another of the mul- tiple-screen processes. 'To Be Alive!' may be the beginning of a new era." "To Be Alive!" was made in Ni- geria, Italy, and the United States over a period of eighteen months, and was completed just a couple of weeks before the Fair opened. "When Johnson's Wax first approached me about making a film for their pavilion at the Fair," Mr. Thompson said, "they wanted me to do a picture on the New Leisure in America-a leisure that has been made possible at least partly by the time-sa v- ing products of the Johnson's Wax Company, which were thus to be very much on display in the film I talked the company out of this idea, though, and talked them into letting me make a completely noncommercial film hav- ing to do simply with the joy of living, "; "^:' \ \.\ \\ i. ÞO-.. . . -: . .... ."..: . 51 and having nothing whatever to do with] ohnson's Wax. Once they bought this concept, I must say they were the perfect sponsor, letting me go ahead and make my film without any inter- ference. Alexander Hammld-or Sa- sha, as we all call him-is a long-time friend of mine and a veteran documen- tary-movie maker. As a matter of fact, he's out shooting our new film at the Fair right now. Anyway, he was ex- tremely enthusiastic about my idea for the ] ohnson's Wax film, so off we went to Africa together. We spent three months in Nigeria, three months in Italy, and then a final six months around the United States. V\T e' d origi- ..: "".... . ..',," '. VIo,, '<<:=- ;.; .., ...,.., ............... --- '''":: mdS . >> . ""''''''' ...... .'...... v. t *"'- " ,...:..'.:;;;:: ,. ':". "vI't r \ ;\ '1 ..t .n :. \ -) . '. , \. \ -:. : 1 , , î .... < oK" v.t#J \:, .} t "", < ' ....-; .IC. it^" ^, ^ y . : ,. "There's enough hate in my heart for both of us"